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Number is up for Kumotoriyama, Tokyo’s highest mountain

Mount Kumotoriyama, the highest peak in Tokyo, is ”as high as this year.”

The mountain, in the Tokyo town of Okutama, has an elevation of 2,017 meters.

Okutama’s government hopes to milk this match-up and is weighing the possibility of organizing events and taking other measures to promote tourism.

Mount Kumotoriyama is included in the “100 Mountains of Japan,” a well-known inventory of celebrated peaks compiled by alpinist-cum-writer Kyuya Fukada.

It is the meeting point of three prefectures–the municipalities of Okutama in western Tokyo, Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture, and Tabayama, Yamanashi Prefecture.

Sign monuments built by the capital’s authorities and the Saitama prefectural government, respectively, previously stood at the summit, according to officials with the Tokyo metropolitan government.

Officials of Tokyo metropolitan government held talks with their Saitama counterparts and integrated the monuments into a newly built one, partly because last year saw the establishment of Mountain Day on Aug. 11, a new national holiday, and partly because the metropolitan government’s wooden sign monument was becoming decrepit.

The new monument, with a granite surface on a body of steel, is 2.017 meters tall, to keep in the numerical spirit of things. It was carried by helicopter to the summit and was installed ahead of Mountain Day.

Officials with the Okutama tourism association said they expect a rise in public interest in Mount Kumotoriyama. The association even received an inquiry from the northern island of Hokkaido last year. The association has made A3-size color posters showing the double 2017s in large numerals. They were put up Jan. 4 at Okutama town’s tourist information center and elsewhere.